Ashley’s War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield
By: Gayle Tzemach Lemmon / Narrated By: Kathe Mazur
Length: 10 hrs
A story of women who rock, and of one who sacrificed it all
I can’t help it. That Ashley’s War is nonfiction sends chills up and down my spine. If I ever wanted to believe that women could be bad ass (Don’t get me wrong! I TOTALLY believe we’re tough and resilient, but bad assery? You go, gals!), here’s this audiobook to inspire me.
A reviewer over on Audible is a Vietnam vet and gave the story five-stars, calling the women “warriors” and calling us all to feel pride in wives and daughters. I think that says a lot. Cuz these women are worthy of that pride, and they had to fight every step of the way to get near combat. They WANTED to see combat, to do their duty, to carry their weight during their deployments.
It’s the story of the newly created Cultural Support Teams—women who would work with Green Berets and Army Rangers on missions in Afghanistan. Since men can’t so much as look at a woman in Afghanistan, it was believed that a lot of information was being lost. American men aren’t trusted, but American women are viewed as entirely different and nonthreatening entities by Afghanis. They could open doors, gain sensitive information, calm severely emotional women and children in highly stressful situations. And they did. Time and time again, Ashley and her fellow CST women got extra information that there were actually more men in the house than what info the Rangers were given. Or Afghani women trusted enough to tell the CSTs how they came to be in compromising situations, how fearful they were of retribution, how this man or that man was actually the individual to be sought for nefarious activities.
Not only Ashley White’s story is told but those of many women. It chronicles the grueling physical endurance tests they underwent, their sensitivity training. And it also tells of their home lives. In Ashley’s case, NOBODY wanted her in Afghanistan, but being part of the new Cultural Support Teams and seeing combat were her dream; she would not be swayed. And when she’s killed by an IED (this is not a spoiler—it’s in the Publisher’s Summary, so don’t hate me!), her death is met with grief. It’s the honest grief that soldiers feel for comrades they’ve grown to care for and to respect mightily.
It got pretty moving at the end there. We might not all be on the same side when it comes to going to war or not, but we DO respect those who serve, and there’s no more honest outpouring of grief when it comes to returning the war’s dead. There are patriot lines galore, services galore, dedications made in Ashley’s name galore. Mostly, the writing was just touching.
Add to that Kathe Mazur’s more than competent narration, her warm tones, and you’ve got a bit of a tearjerker on your hands.
Coming in at exactly 10 hours, I would say that listening to Ashely’s War is time well-spent. There’s danger, there’s sacrifice. But there’s really mostly sooooo much valor!
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